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Bob Skura — Fore Thought: Mental Tips For a Better Golf Game

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Paul Goydos had a zone experience in the 2008 Tour Championship. How else do you explain the 169th ranked player leading the best pros in the world for four days? Sergio Garcia also found the zone. His driving accuracy was 80.5 per cent, the best in the field that week despite his yearly average of 58.8 per cent. Not to be outdone, Jeff Quiney claimed in an interview with reporter Mark Rolfing to have had that special feeling too. But how can this be? Isn't a zone experience limited to the person who wins an event?

No. These men got into a zone of their own because they performed at a level of excellence measured against their own achievements rather than those of other people. Goydos achieved it by hitting his baby fade. Quiney did it with his chicken wing pre-shot routine and Sergio did it with determination. You can have zone experiences too if you understand that it's really not magic.

Research by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Ph.D., tells us that the conditions common to zone experiences are feedback, clear goals, challenges matched to ability, concentration, unselfconsciousness, time distortion, self control and total absorption. Very importantly they all work together like a team of horses. When one condition advances it pulls the others along.

Let's say you face a task that appears to be overwhelming. If you break it down into portions small enough for you to handle you'll make a start that is matched to your ability. This approach will give you clear feedback and direct your next step. Accurate feedback will lead to small successes helping you to repeat the cycle and draw you in so deeply that you'll keep advancing while hardly noticing.

So start anywhere you want. Improve your goals, feedback, self-control or any other condition and the others will follow. Your developing skills will allow you to knock on the door of zone experiences more often, and occasionally it'll open.

Bob Skura is author of How Great Golfers Think — Perfecting Your Mental Game. For more information or to order his book visit: www.howgreatgolfersthink.com.